FOOD FOR THOUGHT

In the first scene of this print, titled ‘Food for Thought’, we see two animals seemingly undisturbed on a equally level playing field. This simpleness and unprocessed viewpoint is characteristic of our world prior to human intervention; a dog was a dog, a ram was a ram, and their was no reason to understand such objects in other terms.

However, as time has passed, humanity and its systems, mainly capitalism, have grown to such a scale that the added complexity does not allow us to see the natural as it inherently is. We have been socialized to see these things in a commodified manner, and their primary value is only understood through quantified lenses in such terms as price, use-value and exchange-value; an externally attributed value to their being that supersedes their intrinsic, unquantifiable worth.

With such a perspective, we manipulate objects through inorganic means - which is symbolized by the unnatural, unleveled playing field that the two animals now sit upon in the second scene - to result in commodities with the highest values - portrayed through the image of a green car that is found when two animal’s heads overlap.

Once the commodity with the highest value is determined, we extract what is needed and have it sent to our markets, rarely considering the implications of such a decision, especially on our natural world, and we are unfazed by the bloody trail left behind us.